1. Technical Field
The present teaching relates to the technology of information retrieval and more particularly to a retrieval system and method for advertisement information and applications incorporating the same.
2. Discussion of Related Art
An Internet search engine, as an information service platform, provides search related services to Internet users. In addition, such a search engine also provides advertising services to online advertisers. Advertising services benefit not only advertisers but also Internet search users. Since the beginning of Internet commerce, offering advertisements through a search engine has been an important advertising platform for advertisers and an important information source for online users.
A conventional search engine generally selects, given a search request or query, advertisements based on the current received query. In operation, an Internet user submits a query to a search engine and the search engine usually returns the search results and links to a set of Web pages that are considered most relevant to the query. Upon receiving the results from the search engine, the user can then click on any particular link to visit related Web page. To do online advertising, an advertiser can register a set of search keywords considered to be closely related to an advertisement (which may be a Web page link or enlisted in a pay-for-performance system). If a query submitted by an Internet user contains keyword(s) that matches with the keywords registered with the advertisement, a link pointing to the advertisement enlisted with the search engine may be included in the search results (e.g., appear on a Web page that lists the search result).
There are some problems associated with this conventional approach to identify relevant advertisement. The advertisements included in the search result are selected by matching the keyword(s) as appeared in the query with the keywords associated with individual advertisements. The matching is performed in a strict manner. If there is no keyword, e.g., in the advertisement database, precisely matching with any of the keywords used in a user's query, no advertisements can be identified for the underlying search request and, hence, no advertisement can be presented to the user who initiated the search request.
An improvement has been made in the past for online advertising. With this improvement, the burden of identifying appropriate advertisements is shifted from a search engine to a web site owner. As part of the web page design, a web site owner can arrange to provide link(s) associated with advertisement(s) in his/her web pages and the placement may be made in such a way that the advertisement(s) appearing on each page is considered relating to the content of the web page. In this way, an Internet user can conveniently observe the links to advertisements while browsing the web page. This requires analyzing the text of the web page. In this method, similar problem exists. If a match can not be found between words as appeared on a web page and the keywords used in advertisements, no advertisement link can be provided for this web page.
Some existing systems utilize users' profiles. Such systems analyze data reflecting users' demographics, interests, or preferences and generate corresponding user profiles. For example, for each user, various types of information related to the user may be collected, e.g., gender, age, birthplace, occupation, address, personal interests, hobbies, and other identifiable habits, etc. Such information may be used to characterize various aspects of the user and may be utilized to determine what kinds of advertisements may be of interests to the user. To collect such information, a commonly used data acquisition approach is via a form, online or offline, based on which a user may provide inquired information relating to various aspects of his/her life. After such a form is received, information contained therein may be analyzed to generate a user-profile. Such a profile is static. However, a user's information may change over time. A static user profile created using such snap shot information may not be reflective of the user's current preference or liking and, therefore, is not reliable. In addition, the reliability of the information collected in this way depends on how the forms are designed. Particularly, it is difficult to have a form that includes choices and options that are suitable to all users. As such, it may be the case that such collected information may not accurately reflect each user's profile. Using such inaccurate information to determine how to select relevant advertisement to be presented to each online user likely will yield advertisements that are not suitable to the user.